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What if it was created by God to evolve?

dybmh

דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
The big problem for you who believe in a God deliberately creating things via evolution is: why cancer? Why genetic defects?

Chaos is required for a material world to exist. Cancer and genetic defects are a consequence of that.

InB4: yes God is still absolutely omnipotent. But God is not ONLY omnipotent. God has other qualities which produce the necessity for chaos in the material world. If God is absolutely perfect and completely unique, then nothing else will be absolutely perfect. Therefore anything which God creates will be imperfect, and that is why chaos is necessary in the material world.

All of this presumes God exists and creates per the question you asked.
 

gnostic

The Lost One
What if it was created by God to evolve? Does this mean we are all correct?

Evolution is about changes over times and changes on population-scale, not on individual-scale. And “time” as in terms of generations, not just years.

Evolution is also not about death, but rather that any changes to the population that are beneficial to them, will provide better “fitness” TO REPRODUCE THAN the population that didn’t change.

In Natural Selection, the fitness was never about being the largest, strongest, smartest, etc, it was always about the ones that have physical traits that ADAPT or CHANGE that are fit for the changed environments.

But the most important is this, Evolution was always about changes to the populations, NOT ABOUT THE ORIGIN OR CREATION OF FIRST LIFE.

The origin of life is being covered by Abiogenesis, however Abiogenesis is a working hypothesis.

If I'm understanding you correctly... the concept is called theistic evolution.

What do you think? Is it possible or maybe something else?

First.

Is Theistic Evolution “possible”? The answer would be “maybe, yes” and “maybe, no”.

The Evolution-part, the theory of Evolution, is already “probable”, as there are already evidence to support it.

however, the Theistic-part, is just pure speculation.

it is speculative because you are guessing as to whether God is or is not involved with Evolution.

but there are no evidence that God even exist, because evidence required observations, and you cannot observe God, you cannot measure God, and you cannot test God.

Second.

Science deal with what’s “probable“ and what’s “not probable”, not in “possible” or “impossible“.

Did you ever do Statistics and Probability at high school and university?

You would collect the samples & data, analyse the data, to make decision or to draw a conclusion, and those conclusions are usually based on :
  • “likely”, “probable“, etc
  • ”unlikely”, “improbable“, etc

Well, in the case for science, these “samples” & “data” come from testable observations, and those observations are either evidence gathered and analysed, or they from test results of the performed experiments.

so if the evidence/experiments/data “support” the model, then that model is “probable”, and therefore the model has been “verified”.

but if the evidence/experiments/data “don’t support” the model, then that model is “improbable”, and therefore the model has been “refuted”.

Science don’t deal with possibility, that’s for religions and philosophies; possibility is belief-based. Science deals with what’s probable or not; science is evidence-based.
 
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YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
Chaos is required for a material world to exist. Cancer and genetic defects are a consequence of that.
Not necessarily and I'm not going to get into this too deeply, but cancer and genetic defects could be however the consequence of what is considered imperfection. These are not something God ordained personally for every individual. God allows but does not personally cause defects. I'm not getting into this too deeply, but things went off kilter when God ordered that Adam and Eve would get the death penalty. It appears their genes were not considered as they were originally, He as you know, prevented them from getting to the Tree of Life. No videos were taken of their bodies and inner workings of their cells and their offspring before and after. :)
Have a good one. :)
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
What if it was created by God to evolve? Does this mean we are all correct?
No, it does not.

No matter what we are not all correct. There are quite a few mutually exclusive creeds and beliefs out there.

Even if you are talking specifically about creationism vs science, that is still true. The facts of biology are just not supportive of any form of creationism.

That is to be expected; the whole reason why there are creationisms in the first place is to attempt to deny scientific knowledge.
 
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shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Chaos is required for a material world to exist. Cancer and genetic defects are a consequence of that.
InB4: yes God is still absolutely omnipotent. But God is not ONLY omnipotent. God has other qualities which produce the necessity for chaos in the material world. If God is absolutely perfect and completely unique, then nothing else will be absolutely perfect. Therefore anything which God creates will be imperfect, and that is why chaos is necessary in the material world.

All of this presumes God exists and creates per the question you asked.

Chaos as used above is not likely how the Natural Laws and natural processes function in the nature of our physical existence. It seems to indicate randomness.

The reality of our physical existence is not chaotic. The reality is all the outcomes of cause-and-effect events occur within a limited number of outcomes, and the pattern of the outcomes is fractal as described in 'Chaos Theory.' The only thing that is random is the timing of the occurrence of individual events. Methodological Naturalism proposes theories and hypotheses that predict the patterns in the chain of the outcomes of cause-and-effect events.

The nature of our physical existence very very orderly regardless of whether God exists or not.
 

Brian2

Veteran Member
Just as your God designed, right?

Believers can't escape their creator god being responsible for all that exists, including the bad stuff.

Yes just as God designed, right.
God is responsible for all that exists, but God is not responsible for how angels and humans have behaved and how we have used and abused the good things He has made.

I have been asking believers why God did it this way, and not some less painful way, and you guys are stumped.

What we observe of nature makes more sense that it's godless. Believers cause yourselves problems by trying to make the Abrahamic God seem relevant. Look what you write here, your God is responsible for children who develop cancer, and suffer and die, unless they survive after painful treatment. I ask why God does this, and believers can't explain the love and wisdom of their God.

Trusting God means just that, trusting Him even if there are things in life we don't like and which we cannot explain.
But God is even more relevant when God has promised a future paradise without evil and suffering. There is no promise of a perfect life for anyone in this life, and for most people it is far from that. Without the promises of God life is sh*t and then we die, and that's it.

Of course you don't. You want what you want to believe even if it doesn't make sense. But why so many want to be lost in this headful of confusion is beyond me. You have the power to reject ideas and shape your God to fit facts and observations, but you clearly haven't. You hold an old model that doesn't fit in with facts and reason.

If I think something is fact then I want the Bible to not be wrong about it. It's usually a matter of interpretation. But it is hard to deny the truth and it can get to the stage of one "truth" verses a contradictory "truth" and there can be times of having a head full of confusion. Nobody wants that but imo the best outcome is when faith wins out and God gives a satisfying answer to the confusion.

I wonder where believers got that idea from. Man made in God's image, perhaps?

Not "God made in man's image".

And you folks who interpret this literally need to deal with how these stroies relate to reality, and you can't. You have no choice but to believe these irrational ideas, and then justify the horrors of nature. According to your beliefs your God actually causes the cancers in little children. How do you justify this? You can't have it both ways, either your God is in charge, or it isn't. When I hear believers explain why a child died, and they answer "God had a plan". Really, so the killing was deliberate. Why is killing children a plan God thinks is good and loving?

Gotta blame someone and so blame God,,,,,,,,,,,,, not for killing little children with cancer but for allowing little children to die from cancer.
It's just as hard or even harder for a believer to accept and go through all the suffering.
We also want to blame God and do blame God many times. It's a bit like Job blaming God for all his suffering when he knew he did not deserve it.
Hopefully even from there God can give us inner peace and wisdom to come through it all and still have faith or to come back to the source of comfort.

Christians have trapped themselves with this rigid belief, and the only way to live in your illusory world that ignores these troubling facts is to avoid online debate. Critical thinkers will continue to pressure Christians on their beliefs, and we will see if Christians learn anything, or sink deeper into denial.

The best thing to do is to open our eyes to the truth and to the errors in the arguments of the skeptics. Faithless thinking does not see the bigger picture which God has presented to us and seems to want to live in denial and hopelessness, and to say that is the best way to live.

This is all excusing God for what you believe God is. It's OK for God to kill a child, but not humans. If you can't hold your God to the same moral standard as mere mortals then it is evil.

You are accusing God of killing children and I accuse God of allowing children to suffer and die, and with the bigger picture in sight,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, if you like I will call it God's 'plan' to redeem the world from the state it has gotten itself into.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Yes just as God designed, right.
God is responsible for all that exists, but God is not responsible for how angels and humans have behaved and how we have used and abused the good things He has made.

God is a Creator, not an engineer that 'designs' things.
Trusting God means just that, trusting Him even if there are things in life we don't like and which we cannot explain.
But God is even more relevant when God has promised a future paradise without evil and suffering. There is no promise of a perfect life for anyone in this life, and for most people it is far from that. Without the promises of God life is sh*t and then we die, and that's it.

If I think something is fact then I want the Bible to not be wrong about it. It's usually a matter of interpretation. But it is hard to deny the truth and it can get to the stage of one "truth" verses a contradictory "truth" and there can be times of having a head full of confusion. Nobody wants that but imo the best outcome is when faith wins out and God gives a satisfying answer to the confusion.

Not "God made in man's image".

Gotta blame someone and so blame God,,,,,,,,,,,,, not for killing little children with cancer but for allowing little children to die from cancer.
It's just as hard or even harder for a believer to accept and go through all the suffering.
We also want to blame God and do blame God many times. It's a bit like Job blaming God for all his suffering when he knew he did not deserve it.
Hopefully even from there God can give us inner peace and wisdom to come through it all and still have faith or to come back to the source of comfort.



The best thing to do is to open our eyes to the truth and to the errors in the arguments of the skeptics. Faithless thinking does not see the bigger picture which God has presented to us and seems to want to live in denial and hopelessness, and to say that is the best way to live.



You are accusing God of killing children and I accuse God of allowing children to suffer and die, and with the bigger picture in sight,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, if you like I will call it God's 'plan' to redeem the world from the state it has gotten itself into.

God as Creator is responsible for any state the world has gotten into, not fallible humans.
 

Brian2

Veteran Member
Read the Genesis story of Adam and Eve more fully and you will find it severely problematic concerning how it describes the faulty perfect Creation with no death and suffering and dumped the responsibility of ALL the suffering and death in the world on the failings of fallible human beings God Created.

Adam and Eve only get judged for their sins. They had no idea what their sins would lead to and we also don't see what our sins can and have led to. They just saw something they wanted and believed the lies more than they believed God it seems.

Skeptics need not make up things because the text of the OT creates it own problems.

The ancient tribal view of God or Gods often depicts God as a human 'Lord' with super powers and makes mistakes

That is not necessarily an ancient tribal view, but is a mistaken view that many people these days see when they read the Bible.

OK, but only after the Fall and the Original Sin.

No I think we were always made to wear out. We are made of dust after all. It is just that after the fall, God refused to stop that wearing out process. The way to the Tree of Life was blocked.

As far as the view of the ancient tribal text the long-term good is questionable.

God in Gen 3 says that someone was coming to crush the head of the serpent. That is long term, but I suppose that there was no revelation then of a resurrection or the full long term good for all people, which is presented later.
 

Brian2

Veteran Member
God as Creator is responsible for any state the world has gotten into, not fallible humans.

We all take our share of responsibility in our small areas and in what we have done.
But it is good imo, that is what God has done to redeem us and the world, it is God and His Son who have taken suffering on themselves and redeem through their suffering and not demanded that we need to be perfect and earn our own redemption except through trusting in what He has done for us in sincerity and wanting to follow in His steps to the best of our ability.
 

F1fan

Veteran Member
Yes just as God designed, right.
God is responsible for all that exists, but God is not responsible for how angels and humans have behaved and how we have used and abused the good things He has made.
Why not? Don't you think God could make humans with naturally high maturity and vastly better behaved? Or does God want many humans to cause trouble for the rest, but for what reason? How about God not creating humans with mental illness? What purpose does mental illness serve humanity? This is your God, you tell me. You are very good at trying to make excuses for God, but God is in control of everything that exists, including mature and mentally stable humans, or he isn't.
Trusting God means just that, trusting Him even if there are things in life we don't like and which we cannot explain.
Oddly believers can't explain why they believe in a God. Why aren't you a Hindu? Or Muslim? What you think you "trust" about a God depends what you were told to believe. All quite arbitrary.
But God is even more relevant when God has promised a future paradise without evil and suffering. There is no promise of a perfect life for anyone in this life, and for most people it is far from that. Without the promises of God life is sh*t and then we die, and that's it.
So you are asserting that atheists' lives are sh*t?

Let's note that everything you list here is dogma, not factual. There is nothing to suggest any of your list of promises are true and real. So I would argue that those who need to believe in these absurd promises from a God not known to exist might need a hobby. To be absorbed in this level of fantasy and think it is real is beyond me. No theists has been able to argue that any of this is real and true, it is just dogma that has been accepted by non-rational thinking.
If I think something is fact then I want the Bible to not be wrong about it.
That's called confirmation bias. Facts are demonstrable, not things we just decide are facts so we can justify belief. If you want something in the Bible to be true you will use non-reasoning and no facts, and find out you are correct anyway. Critical thinkers avoid this completely because they follow facts to sound conclusions.
It's usually a matter of interpretation. But it is hard to deny the truth and it can get to the stage of one "truth" verses a contradictory "truth" and there can be times of having a head full of confusion. Nobody wants that but imo the best outcome is when faith wins out and God gives a satisfying answer to the confusion.
Religion is non-factual for a reason. Believers don't use reason to make their conclusions for a reason. That is why believers claim faith as their means to decide what is true. The dilemma is that faith is unreliable and arbitrary. So believers don't seek truth, they find dogma.
Not "God made in man's image".
Given the anthropomorphism in the Bible we can see that God was created in man's image. God is a he, right? And that tradition of religion came from a patriarchical system. Not a big surprise that the one true God ended up as male. Of course Yahweh began as part of a polytheistic system before the Hebrews.
Gotta blame someone and so blame God,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Well you are putting God on top, and the buck stops there. Don't like your God being held accountable for everything? Don't make it the creator of everything.

BTW, you don't have to believe in Christianity, there are options. You don't even have to be a theist, there is an option.
not for killing little children with cancer but for allowing little children to die from cancer.
They were created with the genes that cause the cancer, so your God is on the hook. Sorry. It's your claim that your God is the creator, deal with it.
It's just as hard or even harder for a believer to accept and go through all the suffering.
Believers have the option to abandon irrational belief.
We also want to blame God and do blame God many times. It's a bit like Job blaming God for all his suffering when he knew he did not deserve it.
God was to blame. These OT stories no doubt confuse the Christian who is told God is loving.
Hopefully even from there God can give us inner peace and wisdom to come through it all and still have faith or to come back to the source of comfort.
I suggest self-reliance rather than gambling on a God that isn't likely to exist as you imagine it.
The best thing to do is to open our eyes to the truth and to the errors in the arguments of the skeptics. Faithless thinking does not see the bigger picture which God has presented to us and seems to want to live in denial and hopelessness, and to say that is the best way to live.
This is an emotional appeal, not true statements. Notice you offer not a single error in the arguments of skeptics. Nor do you explain how Faithful thinking is reliable, factual, and true, you only make a false criticism. And what makes your assessment of my life being in denial and hopless? Do you not see how desperate and angry you sound? I don't care what you believe, where are your facts and coherent argument that inform us that you are correct in your beliefs?
You are accusing God of killing children and I accuse God of allowing children to suffer and die, and with the bigger picture in sight
I'm using your claims about God to make sense of what we observe around us. If that disturbs you then create a better God that isn't responsible for creating what exists, and how things are.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, if you like I will call it God's 'plan' to redeem the world from the state it has gotten itself into.
Go ahead. But use facts, and exlpain how what you claim makes sense in reality.
 

F1fan

Veteran Member
Yes just as God designed, right.
God is responsible for all that exists, but God is not responsible for how angels and humans have behaved and how we have used and abused the good things He has made.



Trusting God means just that, trusting Him even if there are things in life we don't like and which we cannot explain.
But God is even more relevant when God has promised a future paradise without evil and suffering. There is no promise of a perfect life for anyone in this life, and for most people it is far from that. Without the promises of God life is sh*t and then we die, and that's it.



If I think something is fact then I want the Bible to not be wrong about it. It's usually a matter of interpretation. But it is hard to deny the truth and it can get to the stage of one "truth" verses a contradictory "truth" and there can be times of having a head full of confusion. Nobody wants that but imo the best outcome is when faith wins out and God gives a satisfying answer to the confusion.



Not "God made in man's image".



Gotta blame someone and so blame God,,,,,,,,,,,,, not for killing little children with cancer but for allowing little children to die from cancer.
It's just as hard or even harder for a believer to accept and go through all the suffering.
We also want to blame God and do blame God many times. It's a bit like Job blaming God for all his suffering when he knew he did not deserve it.
Hopefully even from there God can give us inner peace and wisdom to come through it all and still have faith or to come back to the source of comfort.



The best thing to do is to open our eyes to the truth and to the errors in the arguments of the skeptics. Faithless thinking does not see the bigger picture which God has presented to us and seems to want to live in denial and hopelessness, and to say that is the best way to live.



You are accusing God of killing children and I accuse God of allowing children to suffer and die, and with the bigger picture in sight,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, if you like I will call it God's 'plan' to redeem the world from the state it has gotten itself into.
 

Jimmy

King Phenomenon
What if the universe and everything it contains, along with our memories of having lived our entire lives, was created Last Thursday by the invisible extra-dimensional unicorn?

"what if" questions are useless unless you have at least a spec of evidence to justify the question.
Around 1980 not last Thursday and by God and the chosen one not by a unicorn.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Yes just as God designed, right.
God is responsible for all that exists, but God is not responsible for how angels and humans have behaved and how we have used and abused the good things He has made.
You're just preaching -- from an unsupported premise that God exists.
First, justify your premise, then we can discuss its corollaries.
The best thing to do is to open our eyes to the truth and to the errors in the arguments of the skeptics. Faithless thinking does not see the bigger picture which God has presented to us and seems to want to live in denial and hopelessness, and to say that is the best way to live.
What are some of these errors?
How are you defining this "faith?" How can it lead to any sort of rational conclusion?
You are accusing God of killing children and I accuse God of allowing children to suffer and die, and with the bigger picture in sight,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, if you like I will call it God's 'plan' to redeem the world from the state it has gotten itself into.
The Bible quite clearly and explicitly prescribes numerous actions that almost noöne would consider remotely just. I see no room for interpretation.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Adam and Eve only get judged for their sins. They had no idea what their sins would lead to and we also don't see what our sins can and have led to. They just saw something they wanted and believed the lies more than they believed God it seems.



That is not necessarily an ancient tribal view, but is a mistaken view that many people these days see when they read the Bible.



No I think we were always made to wear out. We are made of dust after all. It is just that after the fall, God refused to stop that wearing out process. The way to the Tree of Life was blocked.



God in Gen 3 says that someone was coming to crush the head of the serpent. That is long term, but I suppose that there was no revelation then of a resurrection or the full long term good for all people, which is presented later.
Before reïterating, explaining or interpreting a mythology, shouldn't the reality of the myth be established?
That would seem reasonable. Otherwise Christian mythology would be epistemically no different from Norse, Aztec, or Greek mythology.
 

Hockeycowboy

Witness for Jehovah
Premium Member
Adaptation / evolution has played a role in many lifeforms we see. And the evidence supports this.

But was there a UCA (Universal Common Ancestor)? What does the fossil record show? It shows, especially in the Cambrian, many species appearing at once, with no obvious links to previous ones.

That’s why Stephen Jay Gould & others lamented the evidence that the fossil record presented.

Look it up. (Preferably from non-biased sites.)
 
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